The Republican mantra of the past couple of decades has been to tout the miraculous benefits of tax cuts for the wealthy and at the same time to dismantle all programs that may benefit the middle and lower income groups.All these have been advanced in the name of improving the competitive positions of our corporations in the global marketplace.That the results have been less than spectacular has not deterred the ideological diehards from even thinking critically about their course of action.If anything, they slip into the embrace of their “religion” with the same fanaticism and zeal one used to attribute to old line communists.
In thinking about this from a small businessman’s perspective, I believe that business would benefit immensely if we simply ditch that supply side voodoo and proceed sensibly toward a, what else, a New Deal for Small and Large Businesses in this country.
I think a publicly funded ( yes, taxes) education program up to four years of college for all, medical insurance for all and a strengthened Social Security for all would actually wind up costing us less, spread benefits and what is most important, remove these burdens from all our businesses.Those burdens, lasting for generations, have brought Ford and GM to their heels and threaten to do the same to many small businesses.
Imagine what a publicly funded system to provide access to education, healthcare and retirement benefits will do to our society. It will help improve the talent pool of people needed by businesses,will relieve, if not eliminate legacy costs for many corporations and eliminate the burdens that many businesses carry as part of their normal operating expenses.Those burdens alone can make the difference between profit or losses in many small corporations.
The only reason this is being opposed by the rightwing ideologues is that despite what the benefits to the country or even to businesses it may bring, they simply do not want governement to succeed. That blinder is costing us plenty and it is going to cost us even more as one country after another leapfrogs us.
Adding insult to injury, the same zealots are also standing in the way of advancing science and medicine through their opposition to stem cell research and evolutionary biology.Countries like India which were worried about their place in biotechnology are now boldly predicting that an explosion in advances is coming and that it could earn them more than a trillion dollars a year in the next ten years. They are funding huge programs in education in the biological sciences just like they are doing in the IT sector.Yes, these are done with public funds but they know how to calculate the cost/benefit ratios better and have no ideological blinders to stop them.
